I read Aomar Boum’s and Sarah Abrevaya Stein’s book, “The Holocaust and North Africa” — the result of a 2015 conference sponsored by UCLA and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum —with great interest and considerable gratitude, for it explores the fate of Jews in North Africa during World War II, when colonialism and the Holocaust met. “Any consideration of the Holocaust in North Africa operates under a handicap… The accepted narrative is that the Holocaust was only a European event.“Any consideration of the Holocaust in North Africa operates under a handicap, as many of the authors remind us repeatedly. “The Holocaust and North Africa” is a carefully chosen title. Notice that it is not entitled “The Holocaust in North Africa.” The term Holocaust evokes ghettos and death camps and more recently murder by bullets, and little of this occurred in North Africa. “The Holocaust and North Africa” proves that there is much to be learned.

Source: The North Africa Journal March 27, 2019 22:07 UTC